The time of day when we get home from work is often a source of great relief, of a promise of rest and relaxation and a moment when we begin to settleThe time of day when we get home from work is often a source of great relief, of a promise of rest and relaxation and a moment when we begin to settle into non-work mode…. or at least that’s what we’d like to think. Instead, in our 24/7 working world our arrival home from work is more likely to be a marking of a new phase of work, perhaps a little less structured but very much a working world. Our living labour is never far away; according to Marx it was the very thing that bosses and corporations set out to harness and control, so that in more times capitalism can bring us all under its thumb, by making us the agents of our own oppression. Work and labour are fluid, shifting in form and meaning and increasingly pervasive, almost omnipresent.

This collection, a catalogue from the Living Labor show at Norway’s Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in 2013/14, explores these issues of the contemporary significances of work, but through a blending of pieces from the show, original and reproduced essays takes us into labour movement archives, the representation of workers in and around Oslo’s Town Hall, concepts of work and time, work/employment as/in an art practice and the refusal of work. When taken alongside the art works reproduced here, the collection delves into the meaning and practice of work, precarity, artistic practice and the changing character of work and labour as it pervades nearly every aspect of our lives and beings. It is an exploration of the changing meanings of the living labour including but also beyond employment; beyond in that the exploration of the refusal to work (in extracts from Kathi Weeks The Problem of Work and Carl Cederström and Peter Fleming’s Dean Man Working) is an essential aspect of the discussion ranging around the question of work and labour.

Several of the essays are innovative contributions to discussions of these issues, notably Annette Kamp’s ‘New Concepts of Work and Time’, and I enjoyed Olivia Pender and Hester Reeve’s ‘Open Letter to Tate Britain’ arguing for an understanding of Sylvia Pankhurst as a key figure in the combination of art and activism (she was a fine artist and designed many of the suffrage movement’s iconic images) and lamenting the absence of her work from the Tate’s collection. Some of the pieces reproduced, both contemporary and historical, are superb pieces of critically and social engaged art with a powerful political edge, although it is frustrating that several important pieces in the collection were video and film so the best we get is some still.

So, richly illustrated throughout with pieces from the show and others, often historical activist images as well as the more 'art' type works, the collection raises several important issues. Ole Martin Rønning discusses the Norwegian Labour Movement Archives and Library, which is a single collection for the Norwegian workers' movement and Left, unlike others in much of Europe where there are disparate collections divided by political orientation, and raises the question of the function, coverage and responsibilities of labour movement archives in the current climate where the movement has become much more diverse, less obviously trade union based and includes a much wider range of social movements. On top of these changes, the management of archives has become much more difficult with the rise of on-line publishing and networking, which only adds to the challenge. Alongside this set of questions, Michaela Paludan's photographic 'essay' (I am not entirely sure how to classify it) highlights issues in Danish women's socialist-feminist groups and activism/organisation.

Sitting alongside these more 'art' focussed essays are the more obviously sociological work – Kamp, Weeks and Cederström and Fleming – that draw on a range of academic literature – much of it based in autonomist Marxisms, although Kamp more than others has an orientation to literatures of performance and performativity (but not Butler), to pose challenging questions about work, labour, autonomy and the tension between the frozen labour of commodity production and the living labour of human existence. Particularly useful here is Kamp's discussion of types of time in work – that is, of different ways workers experience time by what they are doing. Meanwhile, the images extracted from the exhibition tease those of us unable to make it to the gallery with what looks like an excellent show.

In short, this is a case for resisting the increasing boundarylessness of working life, for retaining ownership and control of our own labour and for the usefulness of engaged exhibitions and critically, academically and politically engaged catalogues. It is a welcome and valuable collection....more

It is becoming increasingly common for a wide range of work to be seen as collaborative or participatory. In my world I see it in community developmenIt is becoming increasingly common for a wide range of work to be seen as collaborative or participatory. In my world I see it in community development work where it is increasingly expected that communities will work with experts to develop programmes that meet their needs (although this is seldom meaningful participation); I see it in academia where in my paid job I am expected to work in increasingly interdisciplinary modes; in applied sport studies, my paid job, we see it in programme development, community and sport development activities and the like – although increasing credentialisation means that levels of community input and control are less than we often profess. I come to this exploration of issues in the development of joint creative work from this set of concerns, not the specific art and design projects Huybrechts and her co-authors work in. That said, I also find that I learn an awful lot from stepping outside my specific area of work to see what is happening in cognate areas; it turns out, there is quite a bit going on and much of it is really useful.

Be warned though, this is not a practical, how-to book, and the authors repeated make clear that in their view good participatory practice is not the result of a recipe to be used with a sure outcome, but is the outcome of open, flexible, hybrid practices designed to generate options for participants through a planned stepping back from controlling power by the programme ‘makers’.

Huybrechts has drawn together a group of author-art-design-practitioners to make three key points. The first is that to be effective any collaborative project must entail risky trade-offs on the part of all participants, including ‘makers’; this is not a risk assessment/minimisation approach that is essentially quantitative but is a qualitative assessment of the kinds of compromises and judgements that need to be made to develop a fully participatory and inclusive project. The second key point focusses on what they call ‘project-time’; that is when the project is being designed and developed, and in some cases implemented, which is seen as a time of hybrid knowledge and practice. In this stage participants bring to the project a range of knowledges (forms and content) to build a distinctive approach to the work based on the specifics of those knowledges within a hybrid mindset. Finally, they turn to ‘use-time’ as a way of talking about what has, elsewhere, been called durational projects where success turns on the principle of generativity, the product of project openness where ‘users’ may take a project well beyond the time and actions intended by the ‘makers’.

This is not just a theoretical discussion: the case is bolstered by good evidence drawn from seven case studies designed to show risky trade-offs, hybridity and generativity in practice in different art and design contexts. In each case the studies are well chosen although it a sign of the times that some many of them turn on digital activity, be it digital games or digital disruption of space through to collaborative hardware design and manufacture. Despite this focus, an open reading of the cases reveals the three key issues in operation, with all their dangers and benefits. There is an awful lot we can learn about the risks, dangers and opportunities of participatory work, but more importantly about factors to consider in designing hybrid, generative projects, including advantages and disadvantages of giving up on authorial autonomy, setting aside expert mindsets and the problem of balancing art/design with ‘social work’. Moving from project- to use-time the discussion then delves into issues of shareability, modularity and acceptance of deviation from the ‘makers’ intentions – remembering that this is not a recipe or handbook.

Of course, it is not all ideal. It seems that the authors struggle with the balance between reporting on the projects they explore and a more academic text, so in places the format (especially with the repeated summarising of the case) feels a bit clumsy; I would have liked a little more flow and perhaps a bit more of the poetics of some of the projects. Unusually for a Valiz title, the proofreading is in places weak, but this is minor.

This is a useful contribution to the excellent Valiz Arts and Society series, and is packed with stimulating ideas that can be applied well beyond the art and design settings. It is a useful supplement to the more scholarly work in Paul de Bruyne’s welcome Community Art: The Politics of Trespassing so that between them we have a valuable contribution to the scholarship and practice of collaborative and participatory art and design projects with relevance in many other areas.

Go out and create participatory projects, but don’t be surprised if they go ways that you don’t intend....more

This is Anne Elizabeth Moore’s second foray into print about a project in Cambodia where she lived and worked with a group oFive stars are not enough!

This is Anne Elizabeth Moore’s second foray into print about a project in Cambodia where she lived and worked with a group of young women university students. In Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh she discussed the process of giving voice to these young women through self-publishing zines. In itself this was a subversive act – these are the first generation of women university students in a context that routinely denies them a voice, a view, an ability to express themselves in public; I am in awe of this project as a practical piece of feminist activism.

There are a few references in Cambodian Grrrl to the systemic basis of this marginalisation and silencing of women – but in this, the second of four promised titles about this project, Moore takes us right into Chbap Srei, the Girl Law. This, as in many settings where there is a powerful oral tradition, is passed down through family lines but is also published and it becomes clear that in both media it has a powerful effect on the young women in the dormitory Moore lives in – young women whose marriage partners are likely to be chosen for them, who must learn to negotiate the pathways of corruption within Cambodian society and maintained by global business and political relations. These are exceptionally bright young women, many of whom are concurrently studying for two degrees at different universities and who hope to manage banks, become politicians, study abroad and move beyond the difficult provincial lives of their parents all of whom lived through the Khmer Rouge years and continue to negotiate the daily demands of survival. These are young women whose options, if they fail, are the market stall their parents run, the textile factory where our clothes are made, or if they’re lucky and can pay the bribes a government job. The stakes are incredibly high.

When one of the young women in the dormitory (32 live there including Moore) expressed some discontent with the Chbap Srei discussions start; Moore asks “If you could rewrite it, what would it say?” (p 30). Gradually as discussions develop new rules emerge; that they are considered subversive or disruptive should unsettle readers – the new rules include “Girls should be allowed to choose their marriage partner by themselves, in consultation with their parents” or “Girls should be brave enough to make eye contact with and speak to boys” or “Women should have the right to leave the home and join in social activities as men do, or be involved in politics”. Other new rules made me cheer – “”Women should have access to free high quality feminine protection” or “Funding should be established for cultural production”.

Moore’s narrative shows these young women being prodded at the outset, but eventually taking control of the debate, some arriving at their irregular evening discussions with fully worked out propositions. We see these women drawing on their studies to analyse their world – the lawyers, accountants, economists and others bringing forward their knowledge of the issues around them to create social analyses and educate each other. These are not just rules for young women though, they begin to develop a critical analysis of Cambodian life – “Laws as written should be enforced by everyone, including lawmakers”.

Moore also allows the women to speak, more than we heard in Cambodian Grrrl, with chapters that alternate between the development of Chbap Srei Tmein (the New Girl Laws) and interviews with several of the 31 students in the dormitory. This structure reveals these young women’s powerful voices and gives us as readers a sharp insight into experiences of Cambodian life and its silences. The most profound of those silences is revealed when several of the young women decide to visit the Killing Fields memorial; of all those who said they would, only five go. Moore accompanies them and in the book's most powerful chapter she evokes these young women’s sense of distress, discomfort, alarm and grief at what they are seeing, and what’s more that the ‘executioner’ many of the signs refer to was Cambodian; in 2008, when this visit occurred parts of the memorial was still an excavation site – it was not the tourist experience it is now.

To her credit, Moore is pragmatic and realistic about these young women’s chances and the forces ranged against their voices being heard, the Chbap Srei Tmein gaining traction or their chances of becoming bank managers, politicians or studying abroad and the conclusion is sobering in the extreme. But the project itself remains inspiring and uplifting; I was utterly absorbed as I cheered, laughed and sniffled my way through these brief 125 pages.

This should be required reading for activists whether or not we are feeling ground down by the daily tasks of trying to build social change, for international development workers, for those of us who think we have a handle on global politics. Seldom have I reached the end of book and felt so uplifted by a small attempt to change a small part of the world; this might just be my book of the year....more

This fabulous small book operates at several levels and packs a punch for doing so: it is a travelogue of an unsettling kind, a text of feminist practThis fabulous small book operates at several levels and packs a punch for doing so: it is a travelogue of an unsettling kind, a text of feminist practice, an example of cultural politics in action, a justification of a punk sensibility-of-subversion and a tale of the politics of national amnesia. In it, Anne Elizabeth Moore (and here I have to confess to a bit of fandom – Punk Planet, which she edited and that I stumbled upon from time to time on travels away from my small South Pacific homeland, was one of those things that had a real impact, and for the life of me I can’t now find any of the old copies…that’s what being peripatetic does) heads off to Phnom Penh to teach zine production to Cambodian students. Not all the exciting, we might think – but let’s step back a bit.

First, she’s living in the first dormitory for women students in the country, opened in 2007 (as far as I can work out her narrative).

Second, Cambodian women are, by all the rules of the local cultural norms, expected to be silent, compliant and seem to fulfil most of the occidental stereotypes of the submissive Asian woman.

Third, the young women she is working with are, in many case, first generation University students from rural areas.

Fourth, Cambodia has a huge historical hole, the period they don’t discuss when it was Kampuchea and run by the Khmer Rouge (KR) and during which over 2 million people died in a little over three years in the 1970s.

Fifth, in 2011 World Bank figures rank Cambodia’s Gross Domestic Product as 123 out of 193 countries rated, with a per capita GDP for the period 2005-11 that saw it ranked 141st out of 181 countries assessed.

Sixth, according to the UN, Cambodia ranks 99 out of 145 countries on the Gender Inequality Index (GII) in the Human Development Report 2011.

So, heading off to Cambodia to encourage young women to find their own voices should really encourage us to do an awful lot more than shrug a so what; it seems an essentially subversive thing to be doing.

Moore has a light touch and a disarming conversational style which allows her to balance pen portraits of the young women she works with alongside distressing tales of the KR years, unsettled reflections on the use by the tourist industry of the KR years alongside the reflection that you have to work with what you’ve got and stories of locals who want to set aside/tear down the memorials and put it behind them. There is a sense here of a country in part still traumatised by the events of the later half of the 1970s, where the period on to be moved beyond, not remembered. One of the most unsettling things is how little the women she works with know of the period, even though some were born during it – but then it is not taught in schools and some key players in the Cambodian state have close KR links.

It is quite hard to tell, however, exactly why Moore seems to pay so much attention to the period – whether it is her key way in, whether it is based on an assumption that for many readers that is all we know about the place, or whether (and I suspect this to be the case) she is trying to work out the role of this historical hole in the country’s psyche. I detect, running below the surface of this first of four short titles about her Cambodian experience (the second, New Girl Law, was published earlier this year), a deep seated concern about a return to the old ways and security of ‘tradition’ as not in these young women’s best interests. Alongside that, however, is a sense of alarm and perplexity for this group of 32 intelligent young women to succeed in a context where they are developing a feminist consciousness and commitment to social justice they will need to confront the KR years.

Amid all of this, however, the central political aspect of the book comes from her allusion to and discussion of the Sandinista’s literacy campaigns in Nicaragua during the 1970s and 1980s – where she points explicitly to literacy as the ability to both read (and therefore find out and believe) and write anything.

Most heartening is that throughout the book there is a gradual sense these 32 young women finding their voices through an underground network of zines, of independent distribution, and in the final pages of going out to spread the word-of-zine. I’m looking forward very much to the next three volumes (New Girl Law is in the to-read pile now, but alas some other things must take precedent for work and well overdue reviewing reasons). We deserve to be humbled by these young women, and to sing Moore’s praises as a cultural activist of the kind we could do with many more of....more

I am a little embarrassed to say that when this book arrived I had a sinking feeling, mainly because ‘community art’ summoned up a group of images ofI am a little embarrassed to say that when this book arrived I had a sinking feeling, mainly because ‘community art’ summoned up a group of images of poor quality work, mediocre plays, paintings and installations in the park that seemed to speak to the lowest common denominator; that is, it was the response of a snob. That was unsettling; I like to think of myself as non-snob like (OK, so I prefer opera to musicals so that’s not all that convincing, but would be even less convincing if I sneered at musicals when I prefer to think of them as just not my genre/format). I shifted my focus from those images to those marvellous murals of the struggles of La Raza in San Francisco’s Mission District around 24th St, to the Diego Riviera murals in the Coit Tower and elsewhere, to the artists’ workshop Favianna Rodriguez and others run, also in the Mission District, to the fantastic comic book murals in Brussels, to the wonderful crisp, politically activist plays an old friend worked with communities of workers, migrants and indigenous peoples to write and produce and to the memory work done by Neville Gabie’s piece ‘The Trophy Room’, developed with local involvement, that marks the town of Middlesbrough’s football history with a series of pieces around a housing estate that the site of the former professional football stadium.

I also took breath because of the insight, sharpness and quality of other works by de Bruyne and Gielen in the excellent Valiz ‘Arts in Society’ series. The line-up of contributors makes clear, this is no celebration of the amateurish: de Bruyne and Gielen themselves have produced some of the most politically and socially engaged sociology of art in recent years, and the line-up includes the choreographer Lionel Popkin, music ‘activist’ Bertus Borgers and public artist Jonas Staal as well as interviews with or essays by Antonio Negri and Tilde Björfors or about Michelangelo Pistoletto and the place of art in the cultural survival and regrowth of a First Nations community in British Columbia as well as the politics of street signs and statues in Rotterdam: the reach is impressive, the definitions challenging and critical insight inspiring.

The book is built around two principal themes: community and communal arts, where both terms take on multi-layered meanings; and dialogue and trespass, within and between producers and audiences, artists and contexts and rules or conventions and critique. This is brought forward by a set of essays clustered into four sections where scholars and critics explore definitions, where artists unravel and evaluate their work and its practice, where theorists, manager-activists and philosophers explore the basic questions of community and community art praxis, and where theorists, researchers and practitioners unpack questions of art activism (‘artivism’) in public arenas.

The thesis (if there is a single one) throughout the book is broad and inclusive, as seen in the opening gambit. De Bruyne and Gielen argue that the rise of commercialised art practice centred on the authority of the dealer-critic rather than that of the Academy has undermined the common in art, so exploring the community means, in part, looking for the common (or, rather, for the Commons in art practice). Implicit in this undermining of the Common is its enclosure, so exploring the common must mean trespass that can allow the community (however it may be defined) to see itself differently, but also in terms of the destruction of official support for community (as in local) art practice. As we have seen in other work, both Gielen and de Bruyne build models of policy and practice, of art action and practitioner/audience engagement, of textual style and symbolic tropes and shifting interpretations of art practice in different contexts. Running throughout the discussion is continual reference to ‘repressive tolerance’: Habermas plays a recurring role in this discussion grounded in critiques of neo-liberal cultural practice. Many of the contributors are harsh about NGO-art; art that professes its critical approach but refuses to ask the big questions that might threaten its funding.

Whereas the theoretical and critical analyses provide insight and conceptual tools to make sense of the claims of community and communities of practice in art, there are a number of pieces by practitioners that are inspiring while also highlighting the challenges of critical and activist practice. Luigi Coppola’s essay about Pistoletto’s working relations with the small town of Corniglia reminds us that community projects must often be many decades long while Miguel Escobar Varela’s piece about video art and activism in Indonesia looks at the role of organic video practice as providing local voices in a dominant nationalist mediascape that is a state of flux. For me, even more impressive in Hein Schoer’s discussion of the multiple and multiform art and cultural practice of community growth, survival and recovery in Alert Bay, a largely Kwakwawa’wakw community off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island and Bertus Borger’s review of an on-going project he is involved in setting up a rock school in Mitrovica, a Kosovan town divided by its river into Kosovar and Serb space where there is little if any link. As discussions of projects, these are inspiring as well as honest about the difficulties and limitations, while Tilde Björfors, by drawing on her continuing work with Sweden’s Cirkus Cirkör, in conversation with Tessa Overbeek helps make sense of the challenges of balancing activism with institutionalism amid the demands and expectations of the (local as well as national) state whose leaders expect both rapid action and change and simple things they can put their names to.

In the neo-liberal world, communities are weighted down with incredible expectation by the state and those in power – public services are ‘devolved’ in an effort to curb state spending as the austerity frame dominates – while the term is invested with an almost cargo cult mystique. Alongside this political prestidigitation, communities are in many cases forging their own paths and space, their own quasi-autonomous praxis, much of which is about the recovery of the commons and much of which takes otherwise very conservative forces because these are projects and practices that work for peoples’ needs. As de Bruyne and Gielen, and many of their contributors, note this recovery, this community building includes trespass on the increasingly enclosed Commons that is often as much about building a community and it is working in an already existing community. As the fetishisation of community and its/their mystique continue(s) to be a part of public policy, of sites of resistance and of a huge amount of work and labour, the essays in this collection should be allowed to speak well beyond the art-world to a wide audience of community activists and practitioners, and to do they need to be read by them; these essays should be explored and their ideas deployed. Doing so will help make our activism better, make our development work better and rebuild a commons on which we need to trespass less. This book has sat in my to-read pile for a very long time; it should not have....more

I suspect that there are many different ways to read this book – as an study of the conditions for the emergence of a musical style, as an account ofI suspect that there are many different ways to read this book – as an study of the conditions for the emergence of a musical style, as an account of life in the favelas during the late 1990s and early 2000s, as an exploration of creation of criminality; for me, it is an excellent exploration of a social movement (and I admit, that is the approach I came to it with – social movement analysis).

Many of us in academia spend an awful lot of time getting our theoretical perspective right, sorting out our analytical frame to ensure that our analytical frame is either irreproachable or anticipates objections, when sometimes there is just a really good story to tell – and Neate & Platt have a really good story to tell. It is a tale about a bunch of people in the favelas of Rio who want to get away from el trafico, the drugs business, that is a glamorous trap for young men (mainly) who live fast, loud and die young – see the movie City of God. What’s more, from time to time, the war breaks out between the factions, highly militarised police raids bring carnage to the streets, police corruption is widespread as are summary killings (by both police and traficos).

Various of the favelas are controlled by one of the three main factions, and although the numbers of traficos is small, their power is huge – the have both wealth and from the point of view of outsiders define the hundreds of thousands of favela-dwellers as criminals. In the midst of all this sits an NGO (although it is unusual), a social movement (certainly), a music business (yes), a set of community cultural centres (certainly) – AfroReggae is all of these things and none of them in the way we’d usually expect.

Their highest profile comes from their main band – AfroReggae – whose style incorporates funk, reggae (more dancehall than roots), hip hop and assorted other influences, some Brazilian indigenous, some less so; it is pretty hard to describe, but several of their albums are on Spotify. But in the favelas AfroReggae is also computer classes, a circus school, dance classes, dance parties (it is a rare event for these to be separate from the drug factions – Afroreggae’s are) and a whole bunch of other community based and specific initiatives; this is not a one-size-fits-all NGO. As a group, they refuse funding from cigarette and alcohol companies, maintain a distance from the state, intervene in the communities where and when they can to broker truces; all because they seem to have considerable respect from all factions – illegal and legal. Their website – in Portuguese is http://www.afroreggae.org/.

Neate and Platt do not romanticise (although they have huge respect for the group’s leader, known here as Junior) and are clear about the limits, but are also clear that the situation is changing; this was published in 2006 based on research in 2005, I doubt that the context is anywhere near the same – but AfroReggae as a social movement continues.

For me, the power and strength of this book comes from Neate & Platt’s willingness to go wide, to engage with a wide range of views – official and unofficial – as well as drill deep into the world the AfroReggae occupies. The downside of this is that it tends to result in a slightly scattered style, and it is sometimes difficult to keep a grasp of who is who. Despite that limitation, in marrying breadth and depth they give us as readers (and in my case, someone whose work has explored social movements) rich insights to a messy and complex world. This is exactly the kind of analysis we need more of not only to understand self-determining social movements but also to explore the kinds of things, ideas and approaches that seem to work and that allow this group to straddle the legal, semi-legal and illegal worlds of a major urban centre, and in doing make a real difference many people. ...more

The power attributed to media systems is quite phenomenal. They are held to be beyond social, political and cultural control while media barons (the 2The power attributed to media systems is quite phenomenal. They are held to be beyond social, political and cultural control while media barons (the 21st century equivalent of the 19th century’s robber barons) are granted a seemingly mystical power to make us do things against our best interests. Yet amid all this there is little evidence that individual media owners possess more of our media – more concerning is the widespread amalgamation of conglomerates (Time-Warner-Disney-AOL; Clear Communications ownership of formerly public radio stations and the like) that serves to limit and constrain discourse; there is a meme that does the rounds stating that the media do not tell us what to think, but the do tell us what to think about..

In this sharp small book Antonio López steps onto this world to explore questions of cultural citizenship, the collective imagination and the potential for democratised media ecosystems. The ecosystem approach requires the creation of conditions bringing about the development of interconnected but diverse components. His critique is powerful – we are too media dependent, we are too dependent on a small number of outlets and views (often like our own) and too restricted in the voices we hear to a small number that work to maintain the status quo. What is refreshing about the case, though, is that López is neither technophone nor luddite, but media insider who wants us to take control of our agency and revive a collective imagination.

While his case centres on our need to revive and reoccupy the cultural commons, he is also acutely aware of the limits of action for many of us. As a result, his programme for media democracy is a useful amalgam of the utopian (desirable) and the pragmatically achievable and viable. Some of his points – such as making communication sacred, calling on us to disrupt the symbolic order by breaking the current system’s monologue, engaging in political struggles for green technologies – are fairly high level bits of activism, whereas others – such as ‘produce more media than you consume, turn off your devices and talk to people while hanging out or organising (small) events (he calls this making media gardens), or getting away from media systems’ glamorisation (remembers, cameras steal souls) – are smaller, tactical and in many cases sensibly manageable.

For López the struggle for new media systems is an anti-colonial struggle, one that resists the occupation of the commons and builds open systems that contest the enclosures imposed by the closed corporate media systems. This is a rare book – it is argumentative, analytical and with a what-do-we-do-about-it programme, theoretically rich but packed with well deployed cases (such as The Story of Stuff – http://www.storyofstuff.org/) and evidence, and all the while engaging and accessible. ...more

The 1970s and 1980s saw significant shifts in the ways we thought about art history, alongside its attempts to engage popular audiences. There were BBThe 1970s and 1980s saw significant shifts in the ways we thought about art history, alongside its attempts to engage popular audiences. There were BBC TV shows in the 1970s that took art history outside the academy – for the traditionalist view there was Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation and others which espoused a conventional academic art historical view. Whereas Clark’s Civilisation is seen as one of those shows that had lasting power and gravitas (which it did) the show that had the impact was John Berger’s Ways of Seeing in 1972. This is the book of that show.

Unlike most books of art history, this is not a large format, lavishly illustrated in colour, glossy papered text, but a small paperback (glossy paper but with small black and white illustrations) and written in an accessible, engaging, pedagogic and didactic style that demands we think, rise to the challenge and answer the questions put to us. In this sense, Berger was part of the change in art history that saw the emergence of scholars such as Janet Wolff, Marcia Pointon, Rosalind Krauss, Hal Foster and others who demanded that we understand art and art history as a social product, as a system of power and ideology with the result that pictures were not just pictures but social, cultural and political texts.

In his version of this approach, Berger argues that the emergence of the canon of art as we know it and see it in the oil painting is linked to the emergence of capitalism and its peculiar deployment of power. He (and his unnamed co-authors – in the preface he says there are five authors) does this through seven essays, four written and three visual, exploring perspective and power (western art’s deployment of perspective places the viewer at the centre of the picture and valorises them, the nude, oil painting and advertising (which he calls publicity) while the visual essays argue for recognition of the place of high art in the popular present, for an understanding of power and dominance in the canon and claims to possession.

When this book was published in 1972 this was a radical new way to think about old pictures on stuffy museum walls, and when I first read it in the early 1980s it remained provocative and challenging. It was with a sense of intrigue then that I came back to it 40 years after publication to consider whether it would be something I should set my students to read in an attempt to get them thinking differently about advertising. Although many of the ideas have become more mainstream, and although some of the writing has dated (for instance, it is gendered in ways we’d challenge now) the case retains its power and its pedagogic potential. It is humbling to find such a popularly accessible book that is both 40 years old and as powerful and important at is was when it first appeared. On its own terms it works, and we should not under-estimate its impact – but it will be intriguing to see what my students make of it.

Contemporary political discourses seem caught between two conflicting demands or presumptions; on the one hand there is a lamentation of decline of trContemporary political discourses seem caught between two conflicting demands or presumptions; on the one hand there is a lamentation of decline of traditional politics – concern over voting rates, decline in community participation and so forth – while on the other hand there is a call to politics as consumption. We are encouraged to change the world by purchasing organic food or ensuring our clothes, coffee and all manner of other goods are fair trade. In all this, an effort to bring about change seems to be accompanied by an expectation of some immediate return, and not just an altruistic sense of doing good, making things better or even the delayed benefits of leaving the world a better place for our kids to grow up in (oh, there it is that pretentious, 1970s middle class justification for buying unleaded petrol and growing our own vegetables).

Shopping for a change has become much more sophisticated and much more mainstream in the intervening 35 years, much more intertwined in and acceptable to the dominant ideology and much more embedded in lifestyle politics. This is the very set of issues this very good collection of papers explores, unpacks and sets out to make sense of. The first section contains four papers looking at branding and the politics of everyday consumption, opening with a rich discussion of consumption that allows the consumers to brand themselves and in doing so claim an activist orientation to argue that there has been a growth of neo-liberal branding of the self that can be seen clearly in many forms of environmentalist ‘action’. Two of the papers explore aspects of branding of the self in extremely intimate ways – Sarah Banet-Weiser’s paper exploring the complexities of Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ campaign which she sees as, in part, shaping the social activist into a form of brand, and Jo Littler’s excellent analysis of discourses of ‘greenwashing’, ‘green governmentality’ and ‘social production’ (the latter two emerging as rich analytical tools) by looking at the politics of shopping for nappies/diapers (depending on which side of the Atlantic you are reading this on).

The next set of papers looks at celebrity activism, from the Brad Pitt fronted organisation setting out to help rebuild parts of New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward in the wake of Katrina to Salma Hayek’s contradictory politics of race, ethnicity and gender in the politics of Latina identities in the USA to Angelina Jolie’s civic humanitarianism and Kanye West’s critique of blood diamonds and the complicity of hip hop bling in their market. These four papers, in their own ways, demonstrate a rich, complex and contradictory politics of celebrity activism that go well beyond profile building philanthropy (although Alison Trope’s excellent analysis of Jolie reads her through a long tradition of celebrity philanthropy to problematise both). The fifth paper in the section shifts focus away from celebrity a commodification of citizenship through the youth focussed organisation Invisible Children. Ironically, it is the apparent movement, Invisible Children, that seems the shallowest of these forms of activism, often focussed more on the performance of citizenship by young Anglo-Americans rather than autonomous or people-centred community development of professed.

The final section then continues this attention to movements. Two of these papers really stood out for me, in part because they are close to my professional work. Samantha King’s exceptional reading of Avon’s sponsorship of breast cancer walks as a form of civic fitness. Alongside the common discursive analysis King also looks at the micro-politics of power in the event highlighting the politics of race/ethnicity and poverty/class. The idea I especially liked here is her use of Robert Crawford’s notion of health as a form of ‘super-value’ carrying a range of other social and cultural associations but also leading to a sense of personal culpability for ill health. Alongside this paper, there is also Josée Johnston and Kate Cairn’s marvellous unpacking of the idea of eating for change and consumer food politics which they locate in the idea of an ethical foodscape; as with almost all the other paper this is neither condemnatory nor unremitting praise, but an exploration of complexity. Also in this section is Lynn Comella’s fantastic discussion of feminist sex-toy shops, fabulously titled ‘Changing the World One Orgasm at a Time’ – perhaps the best title I have read in an academic paper for an awfully long time.

The papers in this collection are theoretically sophisticated, testing and pushing our understandings of consumption and commodification as well as commodities in challenging ways to critically engage the neo-liberal politics of the self, demand not corporate social responsibility but corporate social accountability, to step beyond the labour theory of value to suggest that part of value, at least, must be linked to a surplus of consumer enjoyment (and although this is not pushed as far as it could – this seems to me to be both exchange and use value). This is not to say that all is well; the book has an almost exclusive focus on North America (Jo Littler’s essay is the only one that is not primarily North American focussed). This will limit is usefulness for many.

This collection is mainly aimed at academics but seems to me to offer a lot to social entrepreneurs, in part because it help problematise the field in a way that many of the motivational and how texts and speakers do not, not because it attacks but because it points to tensions, antagonisms and contradictions – always the most important things to be aware of when assessing change. Equally importantly, it gets beyond a romanticisation of resistance as well as a condemnation of commerce while maintaining a critical view of activism’s appropriation by the market. All in all, this is stimulating and challenging, and several papers will be revisited several times. ...more

This is an excellent brief exploration of the politics of power in language, writing and publishing. Anne Elizabeth Moore is a writing/self-publishingThis is an excellent brief exploration of the politics of power in language, writing and publishing. Anne Elizabeth Moore is a writing/self-publishing activist who I have dealt with elsewhere here (see Unmarketable and Cambodian Grrrl) and in this short, snappy set of essays (almost 'class handouts') she unpacks the meaning of politics, and cultural politics in particular, the problem of formal education as placing limits on our vision, the created nature of writing systems (I love the chapter on punctuation) and the power politics of dictionaries – not in terms of definitions as such but what’s in, what’s out and how are things defined, the gender politics of self-publishing, the limitations of parody and problem of copyright/intellectual property rights – all in 52 snappy, engaging and thoroughly readable pages.

This edition is long gone, but there is a 3rd edition about to be published; it is the ideal handbook/pocketbook for those who want to be reminded that radical literature is as much about how we do it as what it says....more

An excellent and welcome compilations of some of Tristan Tzara's finest pieces taking us into the world of one of the shapers of Dada, one of the greaAn excellent and welcome compilations of some of Tristan Tzara's finest pieces taking us into the world of one of the shapers of Dada, one of the great critics of the state of early 20th century social, cultural and political life. These are proclamations, manifestos and performances of beauty and elegance - while remaining utterly perplexing and unsettling nearly a century later....more

Dada - the grand-daddy of surrealism, situationism, punk and so much else in the 20th century cultural-political underground - seems to me to have beeDada - the grand-daddy of surrealism, situationism, punk and so much else in the 20th century cultural-political underground - seems to me to have been one of those things you needed to be there to get. The scripts, texts and performance piece reproduced here do nothing to disabuse me of that sense, but they are simply fabulous. And Mel Gordon's introduction is one of the sharpest brief expositions on the movement and its styles I have seen....more

It's quite short (at only 150 or so pages) but it ain't snappy - Debord manages to excoriate ideology, alienation, much of the Old Left, almost all ofIt's quite short (at only 150 or so pages) but it ain't snappy - Debord manages to excoriate ideology, alienation, much of the Old Left, almost all of the New Left and provide us with a circuitous and at times dense analysis of the emerging consumer society of the late 20th century. I keep coming back to it, and I keep finding turns of phrase and pieces of an argument that make me revisit and revise my political sense of the world around me. A deserved classic....more

The Situationists occupy a key place in 20th century politics - not because they were all the big or all that successful in their political actions, bThe Situationists occupy a key place in 20th century politics - not because they were all the big or all that successful in their political actions, but because they sit in a nexus that links art, culture and political activism, link to punk, surrealism and anarchism, and have become romanticised as a vital force in the excessively romanticised events in Paris in May 1968. Their political critiques of consumer life, of urban realities and power, and their notion of the the 'situation' as a political action remain powerful and woven through much of the politics of the era since. This is an important and valuable as well as fairly comprehensive collection of much of their work with the exception of their separately published books - Society of the Spectacle and so forth. Some of this is great, some however has lost its power in the passage of time to remain little more than a useful archive of the era....more

Sous les pavés, la plage. The Situationists are among the most romanticised of the 20thc century's political movements, key players in the May '68 eveSous les pavés, la plage. The Situationists are among the most romanticised of the 20thc century's political movements, key players in the May '68 events in Paris, superb critics of urban life (possibly their most influential area of activity where so much of their work has become normalised and taken for granted in more recent post-utopian, post-modern-ish urban studies and politics) but very much subject to the quirks of Guy Debord. The collection draws together several of their most important and influential pieces of writing many of which remain worth revisiting time and again....more

Class War quickly made themselves into one of the 1980s' most provocative political groups and the bétes noire of the outraged broadsheet readers of tClass War quickly made themselves into one of the 1980s' most provocative political groups and the bétes noire of the outraged broadsheet readers of the Home Counties. This collection of their work and celebration of their slogan Bash the Rich is uneven but enjoyable, and blunt, aggressive and uncompromising reminder of the inequalities and injustices of late capitalist Britain. And somehow I think many of the establishment hope that these days are past........more

The post-surrealist artistic and cultural tendencies leading to punk traced elegantly by Griel Marcus in his Lipstick Traces are explored here by oneThe post-surrealist artistic and cultural tendencies leading to punk traced elegantly by Griel Marcus in his Lipstick Traces are explored here by one of the UK's most well-placed art practitioners and activists. Whereas Marcus bring a potent critical cultural sensitivity to his analysis, Home adds a depth of art practice and anarchist politics that Marcus skirts. A fabulous introduction to some of the submerged cultural an artistic tendencies of the 20th century - even though it is a little too cursory, more descriptive than analytical, and wold have benefited from a more directed further reading section....more

Amselle begins from a similar proposition explored by Nicholas Thomas in Out of Time – that the logic of ethnography and the logic of history are diffAmselle begins from a similar proposition explored by Nicholas Thomas in Out of Time – that the logic of ethnography and the logic of history are different and lead to major difficulties in trying to work in both disciplines. His concern, however, is not Thomas's one of the ways anthropology can accommodate historical outlooks (rather than the past), but with a critique of the tendencies in ethnography and anthropology to construct types. He makes a powerful that there is a tendency in anthropology, based in the logic of ethnography (or what he calls ethnological reason), to decontextualise data to define types: society X has a matrilineal system, that society Y is a non state, segmentary society and so forth, and thereby freeze them in time – usually the point of colonial contact. He bases his critique in the tendency of ethnography, especially in colonial and formerly colonial settings, to treat its societies as discrete and hermetically contained. Central to his case is deep seated rejection of 'origins', and the quest for a pristine original society, and as a result, his framework demands an understanding of identity and social relations as always already in a state of flux. In this way his approach is similar to other anthropologists (such as Marshall Sahlins) who argue that the more things stay the same, the more they change. I got a little lost in the detailed ethnographic data in places – in part because it centres on the area we now know as the Mali-Guinea-Ivory Coast border areas, about which I know almost nothing, but even with that the argument is clear. What is more, it is based on a solid reflexive analysis (and in places criticism) of his own work. Smart, and able to admit mistakes!...more